I need new sneakers. While this may seem like a simple problem for
the average college student, this need has put me on a strange spiritual
journey.

I have spent days on fashion blogs. I have saved and screenshotted just about every known picture of Aziz Ansari wearing sneakers. Hell, I even joined
Pinterest. All of this time wasted eventually led to the realization that I am
actually a 65-year-old man trapped inside the body of a 21-year-old, so I
inevitably settled upon New Balance.

I must admit that at first I
found these videos oddly amusing, but then they began to bring up a question
I’ve had since I started following politics: As we become more plugged into the
political scene, do we close out certain parts of the world?

The more I think about it,
the more real this issue becomes for me. We have reached a point where it’s no
longer enough to have our own beliefs; we now wear them on our sleeves, on our shoes, on our hats.

Not only that, but we’ve
begun to wear our political beliefs like a suit of armor. We use them to block
out anything that goes against our own views. And at this point, we no longer
listen to opposition in an attempt to learn or understand — we listen to respond.

Nowhere is this made clearer
than on Facebook. We follow people and pages based on their political beliefs;
we curate our newsfeeds so they echo our opinions and minimize the opinions of
others. We share and consume these snapshot political posts, not so we can
better communicate our stances, but so we can simply regurgitate facts
and figures that further cement us in our ways.

The problem goes much further than just social media and clothing, people are also planning their futures around their politics and choosing communities based on ideology.

"Liberals are moving to places the have liberal reputations, while conservatives are avoiding such areas for more conservative locales," Matthew Dempsey, ASU political science Ph.D candidate and graduate associate, said in an email.

While this may seem like a rather innocuous problem on the surface, the implications of continuing down this path could be felt for generations to come. "This could make compromise, or at the very least understanding/empathy, more difficult. Also, America will potentially seem more partisan than it does now," he said in an email.

The solution to this problem
is not simple, because in no way can we ignore politics. Being politically aware
is part of our civic duty, and it truly is one of the best ways to combat the
maelstrom of terribleness that is the world. But in our pursuit of political
enlightenment, we must not lose sight of the fact that politics at its core is about
people. People who are afraid of how the world is turning out and people who
feel ignored, maligned or forgotten.

So instead of simply
shouting our beliefs at others in some misguided attempt to be the loudest, we
must make a more concerted effort to listen to one another and have open, honest
conversations about our current situation. This idea isn’t new or original, but
it may be the healthiest way for us to move forward, empathize with others and
begin to heal the rift so many people feel in the world.

In my first attempt at spreading
the change I want to see in the world, I would like to leave you with this: In
a world dominated by Donald Trump, partisan barriers and violence, there will
always be Mr. Rogers to help us remember that the world is never completely
devoid of kindness, understanding and hope.